La Cabana de Don Luis

I normally don’t stage my dinners at the scene of a bandito shooting a kitten with a pistol. But when this did happen (on the De Pelicula television station) it didn’t shake me up one bit, because I was so enraptured by my first meal here– a Michoacan-​style mole chicken enchilada.
Not only did I tear through my enchilada that night, but I found that I kept thinking about this place after another work week. So I came back for more. These days I know well that the huaraches are always solid (especially cactus when they have it), you can get a good fish for cheap (a full page on the menu includes the excellent $ 12 grilled tilapia), and they get the little things right (the Spanish rice and refried beans are good, and the table salsas (as many as three on some days) are a couple sombero pegs above standard fair). This is the king of Mexican restaurants in Hermosa, and clocking in at 1.18* on the tostada calibrator it won’t even hit your wallet too bad. It shoots down all three Poncitlans like so many kittens in black and white 1930s vintage cinema.
*1.18 = steak tostada price ratio, at $ 3.25 vs. $ 2.75 at more typical neighborhood joints

In short, this place robbed $ 200 from me. OK, where do I start? I was the sponsor for a first communion– the girl’s relatives picked this place for the luncheon after the mass. As a nice gesture, I thought I would pay the $ 200 room rental fee for the luncheon. Mind you, $ 200 as a room rental fee is crazy to begin with because this place is a DUMP– a basic, dingy taqueria set-​up. Frankly, it’s better suited for a gangbanger funeral after party or late night drunken tacos. But hey, that’s what the family wanted, it’s not for me to judge. Worse, the room fee is just a straight up fee, it does not go towards the tab. In return for the $ 200, you get to reserve the dining room of this dump, you get to decorate the dump and section off the tables and since it’s BYOB, they will store your booze before the event. So I get there to the restaurant after the mass and pay the crazy $ 200 dump rental fee. When the family arrives and AFTER I paid, they told me that they were NEVER allowed to come in early to decorate, like they had been promised. The restaurant also refused to store the booze, like they had promised. It was an akward situation since the family felt bad that I paid $ 200 for something that they never got. The funny thing is that the restaurant was EMPTY so our party were the only people there so we didn’t even need to pay to reserve the dump. Clearly, the locals know something we did not and they stayed away-​on a Saturday. The family paid the restaurant tab but the restaurant refused to re-​credit my $ 200. The punchline — when I asked them WHY they took my $ 200 when the family never got to decorate the room or store the drinks, the fantastically obese woman behind the counter’s exact words were: «Because you volunteered to pay.» In other words, I was stupid enough to pay despite it all and they would not refund the room fee. I am now disputing the charge with my credit card company but our family was amazed that I had to go through this. In Spanish, we call people who scrounge for money at people’s expense «muertos-​de-​hambre» and that’s what they were. It was greedy, mean-​spirited, unfair and tragically short-​sighted. You lost at least 20 potential future customers that day. I will also never go to the other «Cabanas» now either. Interestly, if you Google them, they seem to barely pass their health inspections anyway. Nice.
As for the food, I can be fair. The service was quick. The server was amiable. The guacamole was ok, I’ve had better and I’ve had worse. I ordered the «godorniz» which was a specialty, it looked and tasted like hot wings in buffalo sauce minus the breading-​no joke. It was awful. The meat in the carne asada tacos looked more like ground beef than arrachera. The langostinos were actually quite good and relatively cheap. The prices overall were taquiera-​ish because again, it is a glorified taqueria so it’s cheap. It’s my stolen $ 200 that I take issue with. Even if the food had been awesome I would never recommend this place. Luckily for me, there are lots of gang-​banger funeral after party taquerias that I can give my $$$$ to.